Googlewashing - Is It Really That Bad
By Sharon Bray-McPherson
Since I became involved with e-commerce 8 years ago,
the "marketing experts" have been teaching that one of
the best ways to increase traffic to your site and
present yourself as an expert in your field is to
write articles and submit them for republishing.
And with the recent mantra that "Content is King"
being repeated everywhere, many website owners are
scrambling to find helpful and informative articles to
include on their site or blog.
While there's no doubt that having your articles
published on dozens or even hundreds of sites will
create name recognition for yourself and strengthen
the public's view of you as an expert in your
industry, there is a black cloud that has arisen in
the area of your published articles increasing your
standings in search engine results.
That cloud is called "Googlewashing"...
To clean up their search results Google has really
started cracking down on duplicate content. This
means that if you have your original article published
on your website, but it is also included in the
content of dozens of other sites, you could
conceivably be decreasing the chances of your website
showing up in the top rankings of search results for
your article's keywords.
For example, let's say that you've written an article
titled, "How to Groom Your Purple Poodle". You submit
the article to article directories and ezine
publishers giving permission for your article to be
republished. 50 other webmasters and blog publishers
with content that targets Purple Poodle owners like
the article and decide to put it on their site.
This is great right? You're creating name recognition
for yourself and your company and establishing
yourself as an expert among people that own Purple
Poodles.
But hold on Hoss, that upside could have a downside
when it comes to pleasing the "search engine gods".
What if among those 50 webmasters that published your
article is Mr. "my site has been number one in the
search engines for Purple Poodles for the last year".
Your site shows up as number 22.
Now, when someone goes to Google and types in, "How to
Groom a Purple Poodle" - whose website do you think is
going to show up first in the search results with your
article?
Most likely, it won't be yours... even though YOU are
the expert who wrote the article.
But is that as bad as it sounds?
Of course we all want our site to rank high in the
engines for our chosen keywords, and most webmasters
do everything possible to have that happen, but in
reality the majority of those reading this may never
experience a top ten ranking.
But don't despair for all is not lost, at least when
it comes to website traffic.
In my humble opinion, traffic is gold - as long as it
is targeted traffic - regardless if it comes from
folks finding my site through a search engine, or by
clicking a link to my website that I have included in
the byline or resource box within my articles that are
being published on other sites.
It is those thieves that use your articles WITHOUT
acknowledging who the true author is that you have to
look out for... but that's another article.
© All Rights Reserved. (iamsbm)
About The Author:
Sharon Bray-McPherson is the owner of SBM Distributors,
serving the online community since 1998. For online
business help be sure to visit her website, where you'll
find the cure for "guru" overload.
http://www.go2sbm.com
Permission granted to reprint this article as long as the resource box is included and all links are live if reprinted in a html document.
SBM Distributors
